In typical interactive media environments supported by media rendering devices such as personal computers (“PCs”) and portable electronic devices including navigation systems, mobile phones, and set top boxes, visual content such as video, graphics, and menus are given a “Z order” that provides a visual order for the content on a display screen. The Z order controls how visual elements appear to stack on top of one another along an imaginary z-axis which extends outwardly from the display screen. Visual content with a lower Z order appears to be at the bottom of the display while visual content with a higher Z order appears to be on top of the lower Z ordered content.
In some media environments, 2.5-dimensional (“2.5-D”) graphics are utilized in which pieces of audio and visual (“AV”) content are separately organized and processed into multiple 2-D planes that are overlaid, or stacked, into a single composited image that is rendered on the display. This stacking arrangement is considered the additional 0.5-D. The 2.5-D planes can be generated using separate processes and may be characterized, for example, by different frame rates, resolutions, color spaces, image size, and image position. Some of these characteristics including size and position, and the Z order of various elements in the 2-D planes, can typically change over time as a particular piece of content like a movie or game is rendered by the player. Such elements may be used, for example, to implement a user interface (“UI”) by which a user may interactively experience the AV content in the 2.5-D media environment through constructs such as menu systems, interactive graphics, and the like.
Both hardware and software, alone or in combination, can implement 2.5-D interactive media environments. For example, system on chip (“SoC”) and other similar arrangements often implement 2.5-D functionality substantially in hardware. Such arrangements are generally popular because they can typically provide low cost 2.5-D solutions. However, because such hardware solutions are specialized, they tend not to support portability across a variety of applications or environments.
This Background is provided to introduce a brief context for the Summary and Detailed Description that follow. This Background is not intended to be an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter nor be viewed as limiting the claimed subject matter to implementations that solve any or all of the disadvantages or problems presented above.